End of an Internship

Victoria Haddock, the second in a series of interns working on the Thomson-Walker collection, reviews her time spent at the CRC in this week’s blog post. If you’d like to find out more about this project, you can view Victoria’s end of internship Powerpoint presentation at the bottom of this article.

As I watch another beautiful sunset from the window of the CRC conservation studio, it seems a good moment to reflect back on the past 10 weeks of my internship here, which have absolutely flown by.

Although I did think on my first day that I was looking forward to 10 weeks of solid tape removal, the internship has been very busy, varied and with lots of opportunities beyond what I first expected.

Continue reading

PhD Theses Conservation

My name is Nicole and I am excited to be in my fourth week as the new digitisation project conservator working on conserving the PhD theses before digitisation. The PhDs I am working on range from 1750–1961 and are mostly bound. The volumes vary in size and material. The earlier volumes are bound in leather and hand written, while the later volumes are bound in book cloth and typed.

At present my time is split between two locations for conserving the PhDs: the Library Annex and the Main Library conservation studio.

So far I have mainly been working on the medical PhDs which include some beautiful and what must have been very time consuming drawings. The volumes also house many photographs and x-rays, including the x-ray of a shilling swallowed by a patient!

My current conservation work focuses on the volumes which had been flagged up by the survey carried out prior to my arrival. The treatments I have undertaken so far include surface cleaning, consolidation of red rot using Klucel G in IMS, inner joint repair to reattach loose or detached boards, minor paper repairs and reattaching damaged spines to volumes using a hollow made from archival paper.

Detached spine on bound volume

Detached spine on bound volume

The aim of the conservation work is to stabilise the volumes for digitisation and to ensure the text and imagery are visible. On occasion rehousing is needed, made out of archival board.

Thesis to be rehoused

Thesis to be rehoused

 

Keep an eye out for updates on this project!